An individual goal of mine is to read at least one personal finance or personal development book a month and then write a review of it on the blog.
I recently finished reading The Richest Man in Babylon: Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
I found the book through Jim Rohn who strongly recommended it in his motivational speech on achieving wealth. It’s a short book, and has many good points that are relevant no matter which century you live, so I would definitely recommend reading it. There are so many good points that one post would not be able to cover them all with any justice, and I am not even going to try here.
The book claims to be a translation of Babylonian clay tablets, updated for the 21st Century. (replacing old gods with God seems to be the biggest “update”) It covers the stories of several ordinary men as they struggle with debt, bankruptcy, and saving for when they are too old to work.
One of my favorite quotes is when the King realizes that some of the men in his city have all the wealth while the others are struggling just to make ends meet and asks his adviser about it:
“Why do so few citizens have all the wealth while the rest are poor?”
“They know how. And one Cannot condemn a man because he knows how.”
This strikes me as completely true. How can you fault a man for knowing how to do something, whether that is reading and arithmetic, starting a business, or handling money wisely? I don’t want to get into politics too much here, but there are certain presidential candidates who regularly say that “the rich” are getting unfair breaks in life and need to be punished with increased taxes and fines all because they knew how to handle their money. Rather than penalizing the rich we should work on educating the poor so they understand the properties of money and wealth and can improve their lives. The men in this book are not high powered; they are camel herders, shop keepers, spear makers, and other “middle class” jobs, and yet they are all able to learn from their mistakes and create wealth for themselves.
Moral: Everyone, regardless of class or occupation, can save and grow wealthy with a little effort.
This is a fairly short book, and is still available at most bookstores. I recommend that everyone read it.
UPDATE: October 2011
The Occupy Wallstreet movement has been going on for a few weeks now. One of the main ideas behind the protests is making the top 1% pay their “fair share” in taxes, instead of hurting the bottom 99%. Again I am reminded of this book, and the idea that you cannot punish someone for doing well. As Herman Cain said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal: [...] “It is not a person’s fault if they succeeded, it is a person’s fault if they failed.” While I do agree that we need to dissociate money and political influence, (and corporate money especially), I cannot agree that taxing someone for what they know, what they do, and their success, is the right way to help fix our economy. Everyone in America has the unique opportunity to succeed.
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